John Bruggeman, Traxpay@Traxpay asks would you trust Microsoft with your bank balance?

For decades we have trusted Microsoft to take care of our word processing and spreadsheet needs but would you trust them with your bank account?

According to John Bruggeman, Traxpay CEO, we may soon have to as Microsoft may very well become the corporate bank of the future. I was lucky enough to catch up with John at MoneyCONF in Belfast and ask him some questions about Corporate Banks.

Is the Traditional Banking System Dead?

I believe that the Banking system is dead for 1 simple reason, the consumer and corporate requirement of its banks do not match the services being provided. I think we are in an age of technology innovation that has accelerated customer requirements and the demands that they are placing on the banks, and the banks have built themselves up in such a fashion that they cannot keep pace with these changing requirements. Therefore new entrants are coming in that are able to move more quickly, that are more agile, that are more ready to adapt to the changing customer requirement and they are beating the traditional banks to the punch.

What does the bank of the future look like?

It is one that can intersect all the sources of enterprise data that corporates have spent the last 30 years building into their businesses, all the ERP systems, the CRM systems and the big data systems. The new bank is going to come from outside the traditional banking industry and it is one that is going to come from enterprise software, from someone who understands what is important to the enterprise, what drives the enterprise, what predicts the enterprise needs and can provide very simple services around that. I think that just like Apple and Samsung became Mobile Phone leaders, companies like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft may become the corporate banks of 2020

Banks just can’t move fast enough, even small banks can’t move fast enough. I think if you look at some of the other industries, there are great analogies or metaphors for what is going to happen to Banks. Look at the music industry, a simple consumer thing like who gets the wealth that is generated. It is no longer the artist, it is no longer the traditional music company. It is new entrants that were never thought of as music companies. Furthermore, if you think of Smart Phones and the 2 leading Smart Phone providers today, Samsung and Apple, they were never thought of as phone providers 10 years ago. So what was big and what was dominant is changing quickly. I just saw a study that shows 8% of the Fortune 1000 that entered this decade will come out as a Fortune 1000 company. That’s a phenomenal statistic that if I’m a Fortune 1000 company I am scared to death. I better innovate or I will be irrelevant

What one piece of advice would you give a corporate bank today?

Lift your head out of the sand, I hate to be that dramatic but their heads are dug deep, deep, deep into the sand hoping things will never change. Accept that they are changing and they are changing probably 10 times faster than you think they are going to change. Where you might think you have a decade or more, you don’t. You are already losing the important customers you can’t afford to lose, and as more and more alternatives become available you are sure to lose to them. So my advice is to embrace change, don’t fight it.